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The Role of Public Relations in Social Capital and Civic Engagement Weiwu Zhang Texas Tech University

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The Role of Public Relations in Social Capital and Civic Engagement Weiwu Zhang Texas Tech University View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Dayton University of Dayton eCommons Communication Faculty Publications Department of Communication 2014 The Role of Public Relations in Social Capital and Civic Engagement Weiwu Zhang Texas Tech University Alan Abitbol University of Dayton, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://ecommons.udayton.edu/cmm_fac_pub Part of the Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Public Relations and Advertising Commons, and the Religion Commons eCommons Citation Zhang, Weiwu and Abitbol, Alan, "The Role of Public Relations in Social Capital and Civic Engagement" (2014). Communication Faculty Publications. 45. http://ecommons.udayton.edu/cmm_fac_pub/45 This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Communication at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. The Role of Public Relations in Social Capital and Civic Engagement Abstract Public relations scholars have increasingly argued for the broader role of public relations and strategic communication in society (e.g., Taylor, 2010). That is, how can knowledge of public relations be used to make society better rather than simply making organizations more effective? This study examines how different types of public relations and strategic communication efforts contribute to citizens’ social capital and civic engagement. Specifically, this study uses data from the 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project ‘Social Side of the Internet’ survey to examine the relationship between various strategic communication efforts by social, civic, professional, and religious organizations and individuals’ social capital and civic engagement. Overall, the analyses suggest that organizations’ face-to-face meetings with their members foster interpersonal trust and both social-oriented and private-oriented civic engagement, and that organizations’ strategic communication via social media boosts both social-oriented and private-oriented civic engagement, whereas strategic communication via email, blogs and websites decreases social-oriented civic engagement. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings for the larger role of public relations and strategic communication in social capital and civic engagement are discussed. Disciplines Civic and Community Engagement | Communication | Public Relations and Advertising | Religion Comments This document is provided for download in compliance with the publisher's policy on self-archiving. Permission documentation is on file. This conference paper is available at eCommons: http://ecommons.udayton.edu/cmm_fac_pub/45 664 The Role of Public Relations in Social Capital and Civic Engagement Weiwu Zhang Alan Abitbol Texas Tech University Abstract Public relations scholars have increasingly argued for the broader role of public relations and strategic communication in society (e.g., Taylor, 2010). That is, how can knowledge of public relations be used to make society better rather than simply making organizations more effective? This study examines how different types of public relations and strategic communication efforts contribute to citizens’ social capital and civic engagement. Specifically, this study uses data from the 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project ‘Social Side of the Internet’ survey to examine the relationship between various strategic communication efforts by social, civic, professional, and religious organizations and individuals’ social capital and civic engagement. Overall, the analyses suggest that organizations’ face-to-face meetings with their members foster interpersonal trust and both social-oriented and private-oriented civic engagement, and that organizations’ strategic communication via social media boosts both social-oriented and private-oriented civic engagement, whereas strategic communication via email, blogs and websites decreases social-oriented civic engagement. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings for the larger role of public relations and strategic communication in social capital and civic engagement are discussed. 665 Traditionally, public relations research focuses on how public relations efforts make organizations more effective. Increasingly, public relations scholars have argued for the central role of public relations and strategic communication in reviving community relations (Kruckeberg & Starck, 1988) and fostering social capital, civic engagement, and democracy (e.g., Taylor, 2009; Taylor, 2010). Social capital in this paper is defined as encompassing various forms of citizen engagement in community affairs and features of social life such as networks, norms, and trust which enable citizens to effectively work together to improve society at large. Civic engagement involves individuals working to make a difference in their communities. By doing so, they develop knowledge, values, skills and motivation to make that difference (Ehrlich, 2000). Civic engagement activities include community volunteer work, consumer activism and involvement in social causes in areas including the environment to the economy (Bennett, 2003). Two common debates within the civic engagement literature are whether it is an individual or community-level phenomenon (Lin, 2001). Putnam (2000a) views it as a community-level quality, while Bourdieu (2001) suggests that individuals possess different levels of civic engagement based on their personal virtues. Whether the engagement is for personal gain or for the community is based on the goals of the individual. According to Mascherini, Saltelli and Vidoni (2007), private engagement refers to individuals’ participation in those organizations that are geared toward their private interests and social engagement refers to individuals’ participation in those organizations that aim at serving the community at large. Public relations in this study is defined as building relationships and connections between an organization and its publics. Public relations media, be they public media (i.e., newspapers and television), interactive media (i.e., Internet, social networking sites), controlled media (i.e., newsletters, direct mail), events/group communication (i.e., rallies, conferences), or one-on-one communication (i.e., lobbying, personalized visits) classified by Hallahan (2001), are the major mechanisms of creating, maintaining, and utilizing social capital. The advent of Internet media, especially social media, has transformed the practices of public relations. Social media or social network sites (SNSs), in the forms of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and LinkedIn, are defined as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profiles within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 211). Most SNSs share structural similarities and may be fundamentally classified as community sites with profiles, friends, and comments (boyd, 2008). The online context of an SNS best resembles a community of connections, although it is based on an individual. That is, SNSs provide a means for one to focus on building one’s own of social connections via online interaction. As such, SNSs encourage user participation which is primarily seen in the form of providing feedback, sharing information, and otherwise communicating through the web-based service. Therefore, social media improve the ways public relations practitioners communicate with organization’s publics and are especially instrumental in building relationships with specific publics and enhancing involvement and engagement (2001). These unique features of social media make it more likely for organizations to generate social capital. Many studies have focused on the relationship between internal public relations and social capital (Kennan & Hazleton, 2006; Sommerfeldt & Taylor, 2011) and between organizational communication and civil society (Taylor, 2009). Lack of scholarly attention has been paid to how public relations and strategic communication affect citizens’ social capital and civic engagement in general with the exception of Zhang and Seltzer (2010). To 666 fill the vacuum in this area, this study examines the influence of public relations and strategic communication in social capital and civic engagement by using data from the 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project Social Side of the Internet survey. Specifically, this study investigates the relationship between various strategic communication efforts by social, civic, professional, and religious organizations and social capital and civic engagement. The focal independent variable, strategic communication, includes social, civic, professional, and religious organizations’ use of print newsletters, face- to-face meetings, email, message boards, websites and blogs, and social media (Facebook or Twitter) to communicate with members. Dependent variables include social capital variable (interpersonal trust) and civic participation (social engagement and private engagement). Literature Review Public Relations Effort, Social Capital and Civic Engagement Because public relations focuses on building and maintaining relationships between an organization
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